Week 17 - He Is Risen!

“The angel said to the women, ’… He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.’” (Matthew 28:5-6)

It seems that whenever Easter approaches, there would be some sort of sensational claim by certain quarters. I remember it was The Da Vinci Code in 2006 that created a storm; in 2007, it is the film The Lost Tomb of Jesus that is creating some confusion among Christians.

The Jerusalem Post reported on 25 February 2007 that the made-for-television film The Lost Tomb of Jesus suggested that a 2,000-year-old family tomb in Jerusalem could have once held the remains of Jesus the Nazarene and His family. It was uncovered 27 years ago in Talpiot, Jerusalem. Professor Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980, has dismissed the claims. “It makes a great story for a TV film,” he told the Jerusalem Post. “But it’s impossible. It’s nonsense.”

For the remains of Jesus, even if it were a tiny bone fragment, to be found is truly impossible; the reason is that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after being entombed.

A Borrowed Tomb

Yesterday, our church choir rendered a choral presentation on The Borrowed Tomb, an Easter musical of faith and belief. The Creator of heaven and earth was laid as a newborn in a borrowed crib and, upon his death, in a borrowed tomb. Jesus was laid in an unused tomb borrowed from Joseph of Arimathea (Luke 23:50 ).

The Bible is expressly clear that the tomb was one wherein no other man had ever lain. The reason was so that none might say that some other person arose, for there was never another body there to support any claims on the possibility of mistaken identity.

Yes, our Lord was buried in another’s grave. He, who used the boats of others to preach, was obliged to borrow a tomb from another person. The Son of God who rules the universe became poor for our sake.

An Empty Tomb

On that first Easter morning, the disciples of Jesus found the tomb empty. There are many theories concerning the empty tomb. Did the disciples steal the body? Did they go to the wrong tomb? Frank Morison who first set out to write a book to disprove the resurrection ended up writing the book Who Moved The Stone? wherein he detailed the evidence pointing to Christ’s resurrection. His verdict: the Biblical account is sound and that the only explanation for the empty tomb is that Jesus was raised from the dead.

As NT Wright points out in his 800-page book entitled The Resurrection of The Son of God, “the only plausible reason why early Christianity began and took shape the way it did was that the tomb was truly empty and the various people who testified to meeting Jesus alive again… Jesus was indeed bodily raised from the dead.”

The empty tomb would, alone of itself, be a puzzle. Sightings of Jesus alone could be attributed to hallucinations, but an empty tomb and the appearance of a living Jesus taken together, presents beyond all doubt that Jesus has indeed resurrected from the dead.

The tomb could not contain him. The one who shouted for Lazarus to come out of the tomb Himself slipped out of the tomb.

The Risen Lord

We have seen it was a borrowed tomb, not a family tomb. It was an empty tomb, not an occupied tomb. When Jesus came, He emptied Himself, and when He left, He emptied his tomb. The Christian faith stands or falls on whether the tomb was empty.

No wonder the early Christians had a tradition of greeting each other on Easter morning with the exclamation, “The Lord is risen!” to which the response would be “The Lord is risen indeed!”

The closing phrases of the Apostles’ Creed state, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” In fact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His followers from the dead is so essential to the Christian faith that the longest single chapter in the Pauline letter (1 Cor 15) is devoted completely to a discussion of the resurrection.

Christ’s resurrection is a foretaste of what Christians will experience when He returns at His second coming. The Apostle Paul points out, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised… And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins… But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15:13-20). Archbishop Michael Ramsay puts it succinctly down to four words when he said, “No resurrection — no Christianity!”

Praise God, Jesus is risen!